ABOUT THIS ALBUM

Album Notes

Full of cinematic slabs of biblical noir, dusty heat, haunted redemption,and bell towers of emotion, Brother Dege's How to Kill a Horse is a massiveshot across the bow to riff heads, songwriters, and Americana enthusiastsaround the world. Anyone expecting an album of retro-rootssinger/songwriter schmaltz has got another thing coming. Horse is a gamechanger that launches the whole mess of roots music out of the vinyldustbins and into the 21st century. Recorded with cheap Dobros, junkedacoustic guitars, and ragged percussion instruments on a zero dollarbudget, the album teems with world-class songwriting, Ouija boardmelodies, double helix slides, swampland soliloquies, Hendrix-like reverseresonators, and a gang of twang - all howling into the colossal echochamber of the reality.

With his latest album, Brother Dege returns to “reinvent the steel” with theslide-Dobro riff-o-rama of How to Kill a Horse. Recorded at night in anempty warehouse (while Legg worked at a men’s homeless shelter duringthe day), the album is a tour de force artwork that ranges from barnburners to ancient Delta meditations to Babylonian junkyard jams thatexplore the dark underbelly of what it is to be a man in the modern world.Influences include: Ernest Hemingway, Joseph Conrad, Ry Cooder, NormanMailer, Henry Miller, Sonic Youth, Black Sabbath, Blind Willie Johnson,Einstürzende Neubauten, Jackson Pollock and Don Quixote. LikeHemingway at his finest, How to Kill a Horse goes deep into the prisonrodeo of man’s heart, confronting the darker, flawed side of the self whilegoing full-aggro in the existential blast furnace of the modern world,wrestling with men's roles asproviders, protectors, partners, lovers,warriors, peacekeepers, whatever.

Brother Dege (AKA Dege Legg) is one of the best kept secrets in the Deep South; a musician, writer, and heir to a long line of eccentric characters born and raised in the Deep South. Hailing from the Cajun swamplands and raging like the mad lovechild of Son House and Faulkner, Legg has burned a crooked trail to the Promised Land. Avoiding traditional career paths, he’s spent decades exploring the backwoods weirdness of the southern U.S, working odd jobs and forging his own brand of southern/psyouthern music. Since the mid-90s, Dege has pushed slide guitar, resonators, and roots music, kicking and screaming into the 21st century, recording self-released albums in trailer parks, sheds, and other low rent environments that meld folk, Delta blues, punk, rock, metal, hippie ragas, and avant-outlaw country into one blasted whole.

In 2010, Brother Dege reinvented the Delta blues for future generations onFolk Songs of the American Longhair (2010) with 10 blazing tracks thathowled like the field recordings of Alan Lomax and tunneled into theancient mysteries of pre-war blues. In 2012, Quentin Tarantino tappedBrother Dege’s “Too Old to Die Young” for the movie & soundtrack toDjango Unchained, stating that “everyone song on American Longhaircould’ve been in the movie...it’s like a greatest hits album.”